Tagging duplicates

[Jon LaBadie]

A year or more back someone posted a technique for
tagging duplicate mails in a mailbox.  It used T~=.
The tagged mails could then be deleted.

I'm now using mutt on another system and the T~=
sequence does not work and I can't see what I
might have added to my .muttrc to make it work.

Any refresher?

Thanks, Jon
-- 
Jon H. LaBadie j...@jgcomp.com
 11226 South Shore Rd.  (703) 787-0688 (H)
 Reston, VA  20190  (703) 935-6720 (C)

Re: best practices answering multiple mails (at once?)

[cs]

On 08Nov2016 10:28, nfb  wrote:

Oh thank you all guys for your answers. Let me practice what i
learnt then... this kinda seems the appropriate use case too :)

On Tue, Nov 08, 2016 at 10:00:59AM +1100, Cameron Simpson wrote:

It is pretty rare, but when I need to do it I tag all the source messages
and hit 'g' (group-reply), and then pay careful attention to the to/cc list.


Cameron, you meant, hit 'g' always prepended by ';', didn't you?


Yes. I run with "set auto_tag=yes", so i forget this. auto_tag runs commands 
against tagged messages if there are any, or the current message if not.



I
spent lots of time trying out, because i didn't know about the
existence of the ';' function, which i discoverd from a subsequent
mail. So simply hitting 'g' was not working. But it's not your fault,
i thought if there were tagged entries, the action would automatically
refer to all of them, but actually you have to explicitly tell mutt
you want to operate on all the tagged entries with ';'. You obviously
were silently implying it ;)


No, I was forgetting. My apologies. With "auto_tag=yes" mutt behaves roughly as 
you imagined before.



Anyways here i preferred using 'L' to answer, rather than 'g'.


Fair enough. Whatever produces the most appropriate result for you. I often 
deal with ah doc discussions made simply of several people rather than a 
mailing list, so "L" isn't what I naturally reach for.


Cheers,
Cameron Simpson 

Re: best practices answering multiple mails (at once?)

[Marcus C. Gottwald]

Simon Ruderich wrote (Tue 2016-Nov-08 02:08:55 +0100):

> To answer multiple mails at once tag them (t for a single mail)
> and then use ;r to reply to all of them (this will quote all of
> them in $EDITOR).

That's what I've been doing for many years, too, and it seems to
work fine, apart from one small issue: postponing and later
recalling the email will lead to Mutt not marking the replied-to
messages with the "r" flag.

> However in the thread view the resulting mail will only appear as
> reply to one of those mails (not sure if this is a limitation of
> mutt or the in-reply-to header)...

AFAIU, placing multiple entries (message ids) in the In-Reply-To
header is perfectly valid; the difficult part is left for the user
interface: Mutt has a one-dimensional index view using "threading
by grouping and sorting within the group", and this will not easily
allow showing a tree-like structure containing nodes that have more
than one parent.

It might be possible to create a well usable two-dimensional index
view in a MUA in a (2D-)graphical environment when a "multi-parent"
thread can be shown as a planar graph; but one can easily think of
relations between emails that will not result in an easy-to-read
drawing even in a graphical environment...

Cheers, Marcus

-- 
   Marcus C. Gottwald  ·    ·  https://cheers.de

Re: best practices answering multiple mails (at once?)

[bastian-muttuser]

On 08Nov16 19:47 +0100, Simon Ruderich wrote:
> > Hey Simon, your mail is exactly what saved me. I never noticed the ';'
> > entry in the index help screen, and for one reason or another i had
> > never had the need to operate on tagged messages until tonight, in
> > long time i use mutt. So i was trying replying to multiple messages
> > just tagging them and answering, which of course was not working.
> 
> Yeah. Tagging is also really useful when moving and deleting
> multiple mails.

If you are new to tags, give <{tag,delete}-pattern> functions (default
bound to keys T, D) a try.  These are pretty helpful for me.

-- 
Bastian

Re: best practices answering multiple mails (at once?)

[nfb]

On Tue, Nov 08, 2016 at 07:47:49PM +0100, Simon Ruderich wrote:
> In this case it was "problematic" for me, because I didn't notice
> that you answered my mail as well, as mutt didn't show this
> message as reply to my mail.

This is another side effect... yes.

> I'd assume the first id in in-reply-to is used for the
> thread-view and I'd assume mutt uses the first tagged mail first
> in in-reply-to, but it's all an assumption and I haven't verified
> it.

I was thinking the same, *exactly* the same, but i don't know whether
it's a good assumption... If you check the in-reply-to header, i see
Erik as the last one, but still my multi-answer appears under his
message in the threaded view. Also you say the first tagged mail, but
in which sorting mode? In my case i tagged the three messages, and the
sorting was reverse-date, and the quoting (how mutt automatically
sourced the messages when answering) was not done accordingly. Maybe
it's done on the base of the thread hierarchy, sice i can notice the
order being the one in the 'threads' sort mode, from top to bottom
(and recursive into children).

Thank you all for having fun together :)

Re: best practices answering multiple mails (at once?)

[Simon Ruderich]

On Tue, Nov 08, 2016 at 10:28:46AM +0100, nfb wrote:
> Oh thank you all guys for your answers. Let me practice what i
> learnt then... this kinda seems the appropriate use case too :)

In this case it was "problematic" for me, because I didn't notice
that you answered my mail as well, as mutt didn't show this
message as reply to my mail.

> [snip]
>
> Hey Simon, your mail is exactly what saved me. I never noticed the ';'
> entry in the index help screen, and for one reason or another i had
> never had the need to operate on tagged messages until tonight, in
> long time i use mutt. So i was trying replying to multiple messages
> just tagging them and answering, which of course was not working.

Yeah. Tagging is also really useful when moving and deleting
multiple mails.

>> This fact makes it less useful for mailing lists, as you most likely
>> want to retain the thread hierarchy for all replies.
>
> Yep, this is the aspect that 'worries' me more, and i don't think i
> would use it much, if at all, in mailing lists... Anyway ok, thread
> hierarchy will definitely be broken after that, but is there a way to
> decide which single message you want to actually answer toi, within
> the thread? Or does mutt sorts tagged ones randomly or with fixed
> criteria?

I'd assume the first id in in-reply-to is used for the
thread-view and I'd assume mutt uses the first tagged mail first
in in-reply-to, but it's all an assumption and I haven't verified
it.

> Now ok, it's very likely that this message will land in the wrong
> place, but i wanted to try it out :)

;-)

> [snip]
>
> Thanks to everyone, and sorry for the long mixed mail :)

You're welcome and don't worry.

Regards
Simon
-- 
+ privacy is necessary
+ using gnupg http://gnupg.org
+ public key id: 0x92FEFDB7E44C32F9


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: best practices answering multiple mails (at once?)

[nfb]

On Tue, Nov 08, 2016 at 03:42:47PM +0100, Thibaut Marty wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 08, 2016 at 10:28:46AM +0100, nfb wrote:
> > Cameron, you meant, hit 'g' always prepended by ';', didn't you? I
> > spent lots of time trying out, because i didn't know about the
> > existence of the ';' function, which i discoverd from a subsequent
> > mail. So simply hitting 'g' was not working. But it's not your fault,
> > i thought if there were tagged entries, the action would automatically
> > refer to all of them, but actually you have to explicitly tell mutt
> > you want to operate on all the tagged entries with ';'. You obviously
> > were silently implying it ;)
> 
> You can set this option in your .muttrc for this purpose:
> set auto_tag = yes

Thank you for this extra bit of information. It is indeed very
convenient... i think i will set it!

Re: best practices answering multiple mails (at once?)

[nfb]

On Tue, Nov 08, 2016 at 11:57:03PM +1100, Erik Christiansen wrote:
> nfb, your triple-reply carries this header:
> 
> In-Reply-To: <20161107230059.ga19...@cskk.homeip.net>
> <20161108010855.dfy5bwr7jcn4c...@ruderich.org>
> <20161108011542.GA3594@ratatosk>
> 
> I.e. it is flagged as a reply to all three correspondents, and it is the
> recipient's MUA which is stuck with deciding where to display the post
> in a thread tree. IME it would only be if the poster had chosen to grab
> posts from multiple subthreads that confusion would arise.
> 
> Here it was displayed as a reply to my post. If Cameron and Simon's
> mutts display it under their post, then mutt is doing very well indeed.
> (Convenience is maximised, and confusion is negligible - within a
> thread.)

On my side, in my threaded view, it is shown under your mail too...

Re: best practices answering multiple mails (at once?)

[Erik Christiansen]

On 08.11.16 10:28, nfb wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 08, 2016 at 02:08:55AM +0100, Simon Ruderich wrote:
> > However in the thread view the resulting mail will only appear as
> > reply to one of those mails (not sure if this is a limitation of
> > mutt or the in-reply-to header).
> 
> I dont know whether it's a mutt limitation, but iirc this is the
> behaviour on other mail clients too.

nfb, your triple-reply carries this header:

In-Reply-To: <20161107230059.ga19...@cskk.homeip.net>
<20161108010855.dfy5bwr7jcn4c...@ruderich.org>
<20161108011542.GA3594@ratatosk>

I.e. it is flagged as a reply to all three correspondents, and it is the
recipient's MUA which is stuck with deciding where to display the post
in a thread tree. IME it would only be if the poster had chosen to grab
posts from multiple subthreads that confusion would arise.

Here it was displayed as a reply to my post. If Cameron and Simon's
mutts display it under their post, then mutt is doing very well indeed.
(Convenience is maximised, and confusion is negligible - within a
thread.)

Erik

Re: best practices answering multiple mails (at once?)

[Thibaut Marty]

On Tue, Nov 08, 2016 at 10:28:46AM +0100, nfb wrote:
> Cameron, you meant, hit 'g' always prepended by ';', didn't you? I
> spent lots of time trying out, because i didn't know about the
> existence of the ';' function, which i discoverd from a subsequent
> mail. So simply hitting 'g' was not working. But it's not your fault,
> i thought if there were tagged entries, the action would automatically
> refer to all of them, but actually you have to explicitly tell mutt
> you want to operate on all the tagged entries with ';'. You obviously
> were silently implying it ;)

You can set this option in your .muttrc for this purpose:
set auto_tag = yes

See man muttrc:
auto_tag
Type: boolean
Default: no
When set, functions in the index menu which affect a  message  will  be
applied  to  all  tagged  messages (if there are any).  When unset, you
must first use the  function (bound to “;” by  default)  to
make the next function apply to all tagged messages.

-- 
Thibaut


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: best practices answering multiple mails (at once?)

[nfb]

Oh thank you all guys for your answers. Let me practice what i
learnt then... this kinda seems the appropriate use case too :)

On Tue, Nov 08, 2016 at 10:00:59AM +1100, Cameron Simpson wrote:
> It is pretty rare, but when I need to do it I tag all the source messages
> and hit 'g' (group-reply), and then pay careful attention to the to/cc list.

Cameron, you meant, hit 'g' always prepended by ';', didn't you? I
spent lots of time trying out, because i didn't know about the
existence of the ';' function, which i discoverd from a subsequent
mail. So simply hitting 'g' was not working. But it's not your fault,
i thought if there were tagged entries, the action would automatically
refer to all of them, but actually you have to explicitly tell mutt
you want to operate on all the tagged entries with ';'. You obviously
were silently implying it ;)
Anyways here i preferred using 'L' to answer, rather than 'g'.



On Tue, Nov 08, 2016 at 12:15:42PM +1100, Erik Christiansen wrote:
> > It is pretty rare, but when I need to do it I tag all the source
> > messages and hit 'g' (group-reply), and then pay careful attention to
> > the to/cc list.
> 
> +1 (but I always hit 'L')

Hey Erik, yes indeed, using 'L' is better for mailing lists, in the
same way when answering a single mail.

> It can work well on a busy thread, both to avoid inflating the thread
> with multiple fragmentary replies, and to put all of the information
> regarding several facets in one place, for the record. (I use it only
> very occasionally.)

Exactly, or when someone sends you many mails belonging to the same
subject, each one with one question or some additional infos, because
maybe he forgot to include them in the fist mail, or he got new
updates as the time goes on. At that point i would answer one single
mail, keeping the advantage of quoting and answering each part.

> It can be advantageous to swap the order of the quoted messages for a
> more logical flow in the reply, and trimming of the quoted text is even
> more important in the case of several long messages.

Yep, that can be done directly in the text editor... I doubt there is
a way to source sorted messages directly from mutt index. It feels not
even necessary in the end.



On Tue, Nov 08, 2016 at 02:08:55AM +0100, Simon Ruderich wrote:
> To answer multiple mails at once tag them (t for a single mail)
> and then use ;r to reply to all of them (this will quote all of
> them in $EDITOR).

Hey Simon, your mail is exactly what saved me. I never noticed the ';'
entry in the index help screen, and for one reason or another i had
never had the need to operate on tagged messages until tonight, in
long time i use mutt. So i was trying replying to multiple messages
just tagging them and answering, which of course was not working.
 
> However in the thread view the resulting mail will only appear as
> reply to one of those mails (not sure if this is a limitation of
> mutt or the in-reply-to header).

I dont know whether it's a mutt limitation, but iirc this is the
behaviour on other mail clients too.

> This fact makes it less useful for mailing lists, as you most likely
> want to retain the thread hierarchy for all replies.

Yep, this is the aspect that 'worries' me more, and i don't think i
would use it much, if at all, in mailing lists... Anyway ok, thread
hierarchy will definitely be broken after that, but is there a way to
decide which single message you want to actually answer toi, within
the thread? Or does mutt sorts tagged ones randomly or with fixed
criteria?
Now ok, it's very likely that this message will land in the wrong
place, but i wanted to try it out :)



In any case, mutt always manages to surprise me... I didn't think it
was that easy to do what i was looking for.
My bad for not knowing the tag-prefix function, i guess most mutt
power users use it a lot. If i knew it i would have probably figured
out how to solve my issue.

Thanks to everyone, and sorry for the long mixed mail :)